Over the past 30 years soybean production has developed enormously in Brazil, with increases in both yields and area planted. The most spectacular growth has been in the state of Mato Grosso and the Cerrado area of central Brazil. Here soybean yields have more than doubled, whereas harvested areas have increased about tenfold. Given the relatively low cost of land clearing in Brazil, it is likely that soybean production will continue to increase in the years to come.
Intercropping - one feature of the agroecological system of soya production (diagram from “A farmer’s primer”)
During this period, soybean production systems have been able to reach this level of high performance with reduced costs because of strong inputs from public research. Conventional genetic improvement has permitted farmers in various ecosystems to choose from around 170 varieties. In addition, the widespread adoption of nitrogen-fixing bacteria (NFB) eliminated the use of expensive nitrogen fertilizers. Moreover, the major pest threat to soybean production in Brazil, the Anticarsia gemmatalis worm, is controlled with a cheap biological agent, Baculovirus anticarsia.
Considerable reduction of Soybean production costs have also been due to the fact that at least 30% of the seeds used are produced by the farmers themselves. More recently conventional soybean farmers have very rapidly adopted less costly direct sowing, no till methods. In this system herbicides are intensively applied to suppress weed infestation resulting in heavy leaching of residual chemicals.
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-Jovin
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-Jovin
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